Soviet nuclear missiles at a parade in the USSR, 1972 (archive)

MOSCOW, February 5. /TASS/. The Russia - US Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-3) does not require from Russia any unilateral cuts, which is of importance under present conditions of the limited economic resources, Russian Academician, head of the International Security Center, Alexey Arbatov told TASS on the eve of the 5th anniversary the document came into force.

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"For us under the current conditions of limited resources - even now that big money is allocated for nuclear weapons, and still the US and Russia can be hardly compared in economic opportunities - this treaty means we shall not cut anything unilaterally," the academician said. "The Americans will be cutting together with us. This is the unique feature of this agreement."

"The advantage of the treaty is that conditions of parity are observed," he continued. "At the time, where the Americans could do nothing, while we would be cutting unilaterally anyway [due to outdated Russian strategic complexes - TASS]. The parity is most important for us. It means prestige, it means status, and it means military security."

"This parity is along all the other asymmetries - in the economy, in the allies, in the ordinary weapons - this is what we have not as a nuclear state, but as a nuclear super-state."

"This agreement is also unique in the fact that for the first time in history of the strategic negotiations, which began back in 1968 from discussing the first treaty (followed by a chain of agreements, where some came into force, and some - not, but the negotiations continued all the time), the Americans were to cut less then Russia or the Soviet Union at that time," he said. "Every earlier treaty on strategic armaments stipulated more cuts from the USSR than from the US"

"This paradigm was changed, and the Americans now have to make bigger cuts," he said.

Russian and the US presidents signed START III on April 8, 2010 in Prague, and the document came into force on February 5, 2011 as it passed the Russian State Duma and the US Congress. Under the treaty, each side is to cut deployed strategic carriers (intercontinental ballistic missiles and heavy bombers) to 700 units and to 1,550 warheads. Open sources data show as of September 1, 2015, Russian had 526 deployed carriers and 1,628 warheads, the US had respectively 762 and 1,538.